


Ain't nobody know love like me

by DrusillaStanden



Series: Ain't Nobody Knows Love Like ME! [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Dating Advice, Fluff, Multi, Ship to your heart's content, Shipping if you squint/want, Tusk Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 19:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrusillaStanden/pseuds/DrusillaStanden
Summary: This is a multi short episode piece based around an idea from a friend. This piece is for her (Hi Caroline!). It's fluff, it's silly, it's fun. It's probably full of mistakes... I wrote it quickly to get it up. Will justify tags...eventually!Reading Tusk Love (again!) Jester gets in to a debate with Beau, Nott and (sort of) Kiri which can only be settled the old-fashioned way... with a competition on who gives the best love advice. Obvs. Lots of moments between different characters. Shipping if you want it. I do! I've left multiple options in there though.





	Ain't nobody know love like me

“And then Oscar turned round and he began walking back to Guinevere. He knew that she’d left everything to be with him and he had always loved her very much although he couldn’t say it and he was afraid that she didn’t like him but he saw now that she loved him and so he walked back to her and his little tusks were so cute and…’ at this Jester swept Nott up into a hug, Nott’s legs dangling in the air, ‘and then he picked her up and swung her round and kissed her!’ She spun a growling Nott round in the air, dodging the kicks aimed at her shins and gave Nott a kiss on top of the head before putting her down. Nott just glared. ‘Isn’t he dreamy, Kiri?’

  
‘Dreamy.’

  
The door opened and Beau poked her head in. ‘Hi guys, what are you doing?’

  
‘Well, technically…we’re not doing anything because I just finished telling Nott and Kiri all about Oscar and Guinevere.’

  
‘Oh Gods, not again!’

  
‘Yes again. Desperate times… I’ll have to steal her a new book.’

  
‘Steal her a new book,’ Kiri chirped, getting up purposefully and fluffing her feathers.

  
‘Nott,’ exclaimed Jester, covering Kiri’s ears and trying to look shocked. ‘You are such a bad influence!’

  
‘I’m a bad influence! Who’s reading her smut?!’ said Nott, pointing a claw accusingly at Jester. ‘Fine,’ she continued virtuously, ‘I will have to completely legally purchase you a new book. If I have to play Guinevere again…’

  
‘Wait, what?’ interrupted Beau. ‘You. Played. Guinevere?’ each word was punctuated with laughter.

  
Jester puffed out her chest. ‘That’s not very nice, Beau. You’re beautiful, Nott, don’t listen to her.’

  
Nott was turning a deeper shade of green and couldn’t decide who to glare at so she harrumphed and sat down cross-legged on the floor, dragged Frumpkin out from under the bed and began scratching behind his ears.

  
‘That’s not what I meant!’ said Beau aggrieved, rolling her eyes at Jester and throwing herself down next to Nott. ‘Guinevere is such a simpering dish-rag of a woman! Nott would never be such a pushover…the first time Oscar had a tantrum and went off to go cry in the woods or whatever it was he did, Nott would have kicked him in the nuts and said goodbye with an arrow in the butt. She doesn’t take shit from anybody! I mean…how many times has she threatened to kill us, right?’

  
Jester giggled.

  
‘Kicked him in the nuts!’ said Kiri gleefully.

  
‘Yeah, that’s right, Kiri! Someone ever acts like an ass with you – kick him in the nuts,’ said Beau approvingly, offering her hand for a high five. Kiri still hadn’t quite worked out high fives yet and so she butted Beau’s palm with her forehead. ‘Alright!’ said Beau.

  
‘Oscar was very sensitive!’ interrupted Jester. ‘Nott isn’t mean like that. She knows that he’s just very … very romantic and he needs someone kind, who understands his problems…’ she stuck her tongue out at Beau.

  
‘Yeah, right, sensitive. That’s why he only gets with her when she leaves her father behind and takes all the merchandise with him.’

  
‘Beau,’ gasped Jester. ‘He didn’t think about the money at all. He LOVED her!’

  
Beau put her hands up in defeat. ‘Ok, ok, Jess! But…’ She couldn’t resist the but. ‘But he’s hardly the stuff of dreams, is he?’

  
‘Dreamy.’

  
‘Yes, Kiri, he is dreamy,’ Jester glared at Beau.

  
‘Hear me out here guys,’ said Beau. Nott continued scratch a purring Frumpkin behind the ears, not looking up. She was sure Beau had meant it as a compliment but the idea of shooting Oscar (however irritating) seemed a bit…well, gobliny and she wasn’t sure she liked the assumption. However, she wasn’t sure she appreciated Jester’s defence. Knowing exactly who to kick in the nuts and when was a valuable skill…and she was pretty sure that Oscar was, in reality, a likely candidate.

  
Jester turned to Beau with an exaggerated look of patience and sat down on the edge of the bed next to Kiri, the two of them looking something like judge and jury as Beau looked up. ‘Right,’ said Beau, undeterred. ‘So, one, he’s got this whole ‘soulful wanderer thing’ going on right. And I get the whole tortured soul thing but … it’s a bit irritating. Now, if he went the Caleb path of blasting shit up and making giant ladies… that’d be worth reading but he just seems to write a lot of bad poetry and go for walks talking about trees and shit all the time.’

  
Nott looked up, she cocked an eyebrow at the mention of Caleb but couldn’t help but agree with his winning the comparison. Much better-looking and far cleverer than Oscar too… Beau continued, ticking off a second point on another finger. ‘Second, he’s got that half-orc girlfriend back home and he doesn’t even like write or anything.’

  
‘But it’s true love!’ interrupted Jester.

  
‘Yeah, maybe Jess, but that doesn’t mean he has to be a dick about it. He could totally have written a letter or something to tell her it wasn’t going to work.’

  
‘Maybe he couldn’t write!’ said Jester triumphantly.

  
‘Yeah, maybe… or maybe he wrote Guinevere lots of letters and stuff full of his terrible poetry.’

  
‘Oh…yeah.’

  
Before Jester could reply, Beau forged on. ‘Third, he leaves…like three times. The first time is just because she’s human!’

  
‘Yes, but Beau, it’s so sad! He’s never felt accepted by the humans and that’s why he filed his teeth down…’

  
‘Um…’ Nott began but stopped at the glare from Beau of all people. Maybe she’d learnt a little tact somewhere? Neither of them mentioned that that detail belonged strictly to a character quite outside of the novel.

  
‘And he was scared that she wouldn’t love him because of his tusks and because he was green and because he was a half-orc…’

  
‘Scared!’ echoed Kiri.

  
‘Yeah but Jess, for all she’s a wet dishrag and spends her days simpering and prancing in meadows and shit…she was always nice to him.’

  
‘Yeah,’ piped up Nott, ‘Not all humans are dumb. He’s met a lot of douchebags but…I mean Beau’s alright and Caleb is the best so… he was being stupid.’

  
‘He was not being stupid!’ protested Jester but she was cut off by Beau.

  
‘Four! He only came back at the end after he made her leave her family, her village, her life, everything. And like I get that he wouldn’t be accepted but did he have to suggest she steal the wagon? That’s like a whole life-time’s wages for a layabout like him.’

  
‘He was not a layabout!’ gasped Jester.

  
‘Yeah, tell me what he did except write bad poetry,’ Beau contested.

  
‘He was a…a…a general helper. Like us! He was a travelling helpful person.’

  
‘Except he had the fighting skills of dead water beetle!’ said Nott, chuckling and remembering a particularly thrilling passage when he’d taken the better part of a day to defeat a single zombie gnoll. He thought of himself as a bit of a bard…but no-one else did (except the equally lyrically challenged Guinevere) and he certainly had none of the skills you sometimes found in those surprisingly lethal wandering bards.

  
Beau laughed. ‘Yeah, oh God, do you remember when he found Guinevere had been taken by that party of raiders and she drugged them all and he crept in and took her out of the back of the wagon all silent like and when they were well away…he does this whole speech thing about how he’d encounter any danger for her. Yeah, fat lot of danger he was in sneaking around when they were all drunk off their faces on the wine she’d tampered with…maybe she isn’t that bad. Looks positively heroic next to him!’

  
She and Nott swapped favourite stories of Oscar’s ‘heroism’ and ‘manly valour’ and Jester’s cheeks gradually grew redder and redder.

  
‘She’s gonna blow, Nott,’ said Beau pointing to Jester’s face. And sure enough Jester let out a flood of words, her tone chiding and defensive.

  
‘You’re wrong. You two don’t know anything about love and romance and anything and you can’t see that Oscar is perfect and Guinevere is alright but she’d be better if she was a tiefling because tieflings are the coolest and also their colours go better with Orc green but it’s not her fault that she’s human, technically, and it’s not his fault that he’s a half-orc and he’s had a terrible life and he’s sensitive and handsome and...’

  
‘Breath, Jess!’ interrupted Beau. Jester let out a shuddering breath.

  
‘Well, you guys are so cynical and mean and technically I’m right because in the story they ended up happy and you’re saying that they didn’t.’

  
‘They totally wouldn’t have,’ said Beau.

  
‘They might have been,’ said Nott dubiously. ‘I mean they were both kinda dumb and dumb people usually like each other so…’

  
‘They were not dumb!’

  
‘I mean…’ said Beau with a shrug.

  
‘What would you have done differently, Beau?’ asked Jester accusingly. ‘Theirs was a forbidden love! They had to go slow, work it out… get over all the obstacles in their way. It’s super romantic.’

  
‘Well, I might not be the person to ask but if a girl pulled that Oscar shit on me, I’d have…’ she looked over at Kiri, ‘…walked away and’ she leant over to whisper in Jester’s ear, ‘kicked her ass.’  
It wasn’t quite soft enough to escape Kiri’s eager ears and she repeated ‘Kicked her ass,’ cheerily. Nott snorted with laughter and Beau grinned.

  
‘What about you, Nott?’ asked Jester.

  
Nott put her head on one side. ‘Hmmmm,’ she mused, ‘I mean I probably wouldn’t have let him get away in the first place. He was being dumb because he was hurt and so I’d have stayed with him and made sure he didn’t hurt himself and do anything stupid. He obviously couldn’t really look after himself…’ Jester and Beau exchanged glances. ‘If he’d asked me to bring all our stuff and leave you guys though…yeah, I’d tell him where to stick it!’

  
All three of them burst out laughing and Kiri happily echoed ‘Stick it!’

  
‘I still think you guys don’t understand,’ said Jester plaintively. ‘You don’t know about love. I know about love because my mum…’

  
‘Is the best lay ever,’ warbled Nott and Beau together excruciatingly off-key.

  
Jester glared. ‘Yeah…well. You don’t get it. It was a forbidden love and it’s beautiful and Oscar is perfect and it’s all super super romantic.’

  
Beau got a speculative look in her eye. ‘So…you think we don’t know anything about love? Wanna bet?’


End file.
